Rather
than a transformative systemic response into a new adaptive 'phase-shift', we
see a powerful cross-sector political economic faction with vested interests in
the current structure of the global system engaged in efforts at systemic
consolidation. -- Nafeez Ahmed

As we have witnessed this past year the triumph of the
radical right over our sweetheart progressive movement, it's become obvious
that they have what we lack: a clear, consistent agenda.

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And there's a good reason for that. We have eschewed dogma
and embraced ambiguity, knowing that the world is not black and white. We
disdain ideologies, having learned enough history to be convinced that they
ultimately reveal their limitations. Our principles of cooperation and collaboration
are high-minded and valid, but they represent a new paradigm, a sharp turn from
competitive, individualistic patriarchy, and we have somehow failed to
articulate that paradigm or the need for it in terms that the public can
understand. Even Bernie, whose speeches are peppered with promises that his administration
would assuage all needs, has not presented a truly comprehensive vision for
this new age.

The Republicans have moved so far to the extreme right that
they seem to be shooting themselves in the foot repeatedly, and we'd like to
think that they will eventually -- sooner rather than later -- implode from
within and then, lacking sufficient public support, collapse from the sheer
weight of their own idiocy. But thus far, that is not what's happening. Their
backers have tons of money, and unless the financial system itself collapses,
they aren't likely to run out of resources anytime soon. Meanwhile, they
relentlessly advance their agenda, disregarding all established government
protocol to get what they want. Just last month, to name one example, Trump
threatened not to sign any proposed legislation to protect immigrant youth
protected under DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) unless the
Democrats would fund his pet project, the wall along the Mexican border. That
kind of manipulation is just plain sinister. The same week, Attorney General
Jeff Sessions came out in favor of debtor's prisons for poor people who can't
afford to pay fines or court fees for small infractions! https://www.aclu.org/blog/racial-justice/race-and-criminal-justice/jeff-sessions-takes-stand-debtors-prisons/
And it was also revealed last week by journalist Allen Nair on Amy Goodman's
Democracy Now that Homeland Security is doing surveillance all over the world,
and further, in another report, that airports will soon be taking face shots of
Americans at check-in. Does this all sound like the democratic society you grew
up in? Doesn't it rather seem to be the march of totalitarian control over our
very lives?

In a recent column https://www.truthdig.com/articles/resisting-trumpism-requires-grand-unifying-theory/
the ever-adventurous Sonali Kolhatkar (host of "Rising Up With Sonali"
on Pacifica Radio) defines "A Grand Unifying Theory" of the Republicans: "The
Grand Unified Theory of politics is that there is a small group of wealthy
corporate elites who have taken political power by means of the wealth they
have amassed, and their goal is to amass even more wealth." She goes on to say that
we, the resistance, need a Grand Theory of our own: "If we are to effectively
take on Trumpism and the Republican Party agenda, we need to adopt a universal
approach, or a Grand Unified Theory of political resistance and organizing.
Indeed, the right has done precisely that!"

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Yes, and it's about time we, the opposition, the great
majority, woke up and began to tackle this problem. But is the right interested only in money? And is it a theory of resistance that we need or something
more broad, something compelling, an inspired vision of how we propose to
address the critical problems we face in this country and in the world? Both
are more complex than what Sonali suggests in this writing.

The people behind Trump hardly need more
money. Men like Robert Mercer and the Koch brothers don't need to stick their
necks out to buttress their incomes. Their world view goes deeper than that,
and what they really want is power, the power to do what they feel is right for
their America at this time. Because the reality is that these men, like the
working-class men in America who supported Trump, feel threatened. They realize
that the rule of white men may be over. As Naomi Klein wrote in 2011,
reporting on a conference held by the Heartland Institute, these men see that
acknowledging and addressing climate change would mean the end of the system that
has allowed them to flourish. To men like the president of the Heartland
Institute Joseph Bast, the liberal solution to addressing climate change "looks
like the end of the world. It's not, of course. But it is, for all intents and
purposes, the end of his world." And
"it's always easier to deny reality than to watch your worldview get
shattered." The fact that "a robust
international regulatory architecture," such as that which began to take shape
at the Paris climate talks, will be required, "is what Heartlanders mean when
they warn that climate change will usher in a sinister 'world government.'"
Trump's announcement that the US would withdraw from the Paris Agreement is
perfectly aligned with the deepest fears of his major funders.

The Republicans on the right--which at
the moment seems to be virtually all of them, especially the evangelicals--fear
that their America is endangered by the prevailing liberal agenda, its
permissiveness a threat to what they consider their Christian values: heterosexuality,
marriage, male dominance, white superiority, and wealth the just reward for hard
work. Most threatening of all, is the rise of women demanding choice.

The Repubs and their evangelical and
disenfranchised working-class white base embrace a worldview based on their
perceptions of the decline of our civilization. Immigrants are taking jobs,
China is taking over the global economy, and transgendered people are evidence
of the triumph of Satan (as Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore declared in his
speech challenging the validity of his defeat at the polls). For him and his
supporters, all we need is that old-time religion and people with the money to
fund political campaigns to elect candidates who will bring back the old white
America, that
never really existed except maybe in the pre-civil war South.

Certainly we must agree with Kolhatkar
that an accurate analysis of the prevailing tyranny is necessary. Even more
crucial is a platform that supports our diverse critiques and articulates a
viable alternative.

We do have an agenda, one based on ecology, wholeness, and
sharing, but thus far it has been too soft to compete with the dominant masculine,
ego-driven agenda. We need a clearer, firmer, more practical agenda to address
the urgent dangers posed by climate change and nuclear war, one based on goals
that the majority of Americas share. We have been developing this paradigm
since we realized as youth in the 1960s that the future itself was endangered
by a profit-driven, competitive, inhumane system that kept on fabricating
reasons to conduct imperialist wars. But articulating that radical new paradigm
has been difficult, particularly since we began identifying with groups that
represent the interests of minorities whose values threaten or defy mainstream
values. We are not communists, and even more gentle forms of socialism do not
include the shift in consciousness that is the prerequisite for a holistic,
global approach to social transformation.

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We have chosen to work on the ground, in the local arena,
developing organic food systems and other forms of land management that do not
rely on private ownership. How do we translate that experience into a
compelling mass movement? Demanding that housing, healthcare and food are human
rights is not sufficient. We need to be able to explain how those needs will be
met. What are the mechanisms that will provide them? We must show that
regenerative agriculture can provide the means, that cooperative ownership of
businesses can provide jobs, that new institutions such as community land
trusts are an effective way of holding land that keeps it affordable. We have
called for local economies with public banks and simpler lifestyles that don't
produce so much unnecessary garbage. These efforts may look small in comparison
with the mainstream operating system but they are fundamental to changing our
way of life in conformity with the reality of our age: climate change combined
with shrinking resources, particularly water and available land; large
populations; widespread contamination of land and essential resources;
corporatization of farming with its petroleum-based pesticides; and the looming
possibility that our completely unbalanced economy riddled with debts both
public and private may once again fail.

Trump and his legions are moving as fast as they can to
adopt selfish, competitive, and patriarchal controls based on utterly
retrograde concepts to shore up their fragile, unsustainable lifestyles,
claiming that inflated military spending, mean-spirited immigration policies,
indecent tax bills, and foreign-policy blunders alienating this country from
the rest of the world are all steps to a more secure America. They are wrong,
but they are still mercilessly advancing their agendas to a population growing
increasingly resentful and restless. But despite growing resistance, the
majority feels paralyzed. The situation our so-called leaders are creating,
stripping government of its necessary regulatory functions while failing to
confront the most frightening global dangers the world has ever known, seems to
be outside our control. We have enough to do just managing our private lives in
such a hostile environment and we retreat whenever possible, once the kids are
in bed, to stupefying distractions; our lack of response is a recipe for a
complete totalitarian takeover.

We need to conjure an uplifting, inspiring vision of the
world we want to see emerging on the other side of this lunatic crisis. We have
the components. We want an America of equality, economic and racial justice,
free public education and top-notch national healthcare. We want prosperity,
and the way of life we used to have, with quite a lot of dispensable income to
buy all the goodies our high-tech system can create. But we are beginning to
see that that is not the way it's going. We are moving into -- we are already
experiencing -- austerity, scarcity, mounting debt, rising homelessness, to say
nothing of hugely expensive national disasters that utterly disrupt our every-day lives.

Stephanie Hiller is a Life Coach and author, former pubisher of Awakened Woman e-zine (AWe) and currently at work on a book about nuclear weapons. She is a student of healing and follows developments in aging, health politics, mind body medicine, (more...)